Naked ambition is nothing new to politics. But in Russia it’s out there, and in your face.

Even before likely presidential candidates Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev toss their hats into the ring for the 2012 Russian election, some supporters are ready to give them the shirts off their backs.

“Putin’s Army,” a gaggle of Bond Girl clones with teetering heels and firm opinions are challenging their peers to “rip it up for Putin” — by ripping open their tops.

Meanwhile, a buxom kick boxer shows off her skill with feet and fists to defend her Dear Leader, wielding a wicked-edged knife.

There’s more, much more, including the sassy soldiers, who have dressed up as mini-skirted assassins to blow away the competition, stripped to bikinis for a campaign car wash and even dedicated a raunchy rock video to Putin’s dog.

And they exclaim breathlessly, it’s all for the love of a man who is all things to all Russians: a Jedi warrior, a blockbuster spy hero, martial arts champ, Indiana Jones-style archeological adventurer, babe-magnet, crooner, saviour of the country and the man they want their daughters to marry.

So far Russia’s current president, Medvedev, is outgunned by Putin’s Army, and the beefcake images that have created a cult around the former KGB operative.

Medvedev, a normally buttoned-up, diminutive lawyer can’t compete with Putin’s bare-chested macho image, or the muscular, thousands-strong youth organization Nashi that the Kremlin built to back Putin up.

But Medvedev has fought back with his own fan club, Medvedev’s Girls, who offered to strip in a Moscow square every time onlookers dumped their beer into nearby buckets, to publicize Medvedev’s anti-drinking campaign. And his elegant wife, Svetlana, agreed to lead a “parade of blonds” for a museum opening in Sochi next month.

So far so bad.

With the list of presidential candidates officially draped in uncertainty, what seems clear to most Russians is that Putin’s name will be on it.

The question is whether it will be coupled with Medvedev’s. And whether the outcome will make a difference to the hard realities that Russia is facing in the next six years: endemic problems of a country that is still mired in the past, and losing the very youth who are its future to a brain drain.

Although Putin and Medvedev look like rivals in the run up to the election, they are also known as “the Tandem,” with little doubt as to who is in the front seat. Putin recently joked that the pair have become “an effective instrument” and that he would try a two-seater bike ride with Medvedev. They have also showed solidarity by taking a well-publicized fishing trip together, a hint that they may decide to prolong the partnership, perhaps with a reversal of roles.

“It’s not about personalities,” says political scientist Piotr Dutkiewicz of Carleton University, co-editor of Russia: The Challenges of Transformation. “In this election it’s the country that is at stake.”

Have Russian politics been reduced to a cult of personality — echoing back to the days of bloody-handed leader Joseph Stalin?

Perhaps surprisingly, experts say otherwise. And in spite of Putin’s MGM-on-the-Moskva image — with a sly nod to Daniel Craig — they believe he is motivated not by an overheated ego, but cool political calculation.

Appearances aside, those who have met him, and followed his career closely, maintain that he is not at ease with a personality cult.

“He’s actually very different,” says Richard Sakwa of University of Kent, who has written three books on Putin and his era. “He’s a very complex personality. He does have a strong (ego), but he detests the adulation. He just thinks it’s a political necessity.”

Putin himself denies any cult status, telling Russian news agency RIA Novosti that a cult of personality is accompanied by “mass breaches of law connected with repression,” and “even in nightmares I couldn’t imagine this ever happening in today’s Russia because our society is mature enough” not to repeat the horrors of Stalin’s rule.

For decades, in fact, Putin stayed in the shadows as a KGB man, city bureaucrat and federal security official until he emerged as prime minister, then retiring-president Boris Yeltsin’s choice for a successor in 1999. Twice elected president, he gained rock star status as a new Russian saviour at a time when the country was stumbling like its former leader. He stepped down in 2008 because of the constitution’s ban on running for a third consecutive term.

When Putin took office, the fortunes, and life expectancy, of ordinary Russians had plummeted after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Pensions and social security were almost worthless and life savings vanished into collapsing banks. The ruble bounced and skidded, while the American dollar was the currency of choice. Meanwhile violent mafia vendettas left the streets, and sometimes onlookers, riddled with bullets. And some of Russia’s restive regions were looking for the exit.

Into this dire scene Putin hurtled like a comet. As oil revenues escalated, the treasury filled, the ruble stabilized, pensions and salaries rose, and a brutal war was fought and won in separatist Chechnya, his light shone ever brighter.

So did the glitz and glitter of his image. Buffed, skeptics say, by Kremlin spin doctors.

A widely hyped rock video, “I Want a Man like Putin,” featured a perky girl group, comparing him favourably with their loser boyfriends. Teenagers pinned up posters of the president riding and fishing topless, throwing opponents in the judo ring, and scuba diving for archeological treasures.

At Nashi’s annual lakeside summer camp, some 20,000 young people gather beneath giant portraits of their leader for government-subsidized propaganda sessions, physical training and lectures by elite American academics and politicians. And Putin himself addresses the disciples known as enforcers of his “sovereign democracy.”

Morphing from pale bureaucrat to 3-D action man, Putin appears as close to a cult of personality as any leader since Stalin.

His opponents point out that he has also come closer to restoring a one-party state — herding opponents into his political camp with rewards or punishments, replacing leaders of the often corrupt regions, shoring up the security state, and centralizing power.

Yet in an age of celebrity, a personality cult no longer has the sinister connotations of the past.

Polls run by the Levada Centre for public opinion research in Moscow show a steady increase in those who believe a Putin cult exists, from 10 per cent five years ago to 27 per cent last year.

Yet their latest polls on the upcoming elections say that the percentage of respondents who would vote for Putin if he were on the slate today has dropped from a low 25 per cent in January to a lower 23 per cent.

Medvedev polled 20 per cent, falling to 18 per cent.

The meagre results are the opposite of the hype stoked by Putin and his supporters. But the relationship between hype and reality is a complex one, says Alexey Grazhdankin, Levada’s deputy director.

“Soon it will be almost 12 years since (Putin) was in power,” he says. “In the beginning he was the ‘president of hope,’ but now disillusion is growing. Here’s the paradox: thanks to the way TV depicts Putin, he is still the chief political figure in the country. With no (real) alternatives, he enjoys wide political support.”

Very few people in Russia read newspapers, Grazhdankin points out. Most in the sprawling country get news from state-linked television — which portrays Putin in the most favourable light.

“Currently we have a situation of ritual reproduction of power,” he says. “It’s not even necessary to manipulate the election results. The population will vote for the current political leadership.”

But whoever wins Russia’s top job next spring will face serious issues.

The Nashistas who turn out for Putin are expressing not just adulation, but the frustration of well-educated youth who see little future in a country that runs on oil, but stalls on building a much-needed modern political and economic base.

Instead of turning to enterprise and innovation they are using Nashi and other politically-backed groups to network for jobs in the places that count — the governing bodies.

“Young people are going where the real power, money and influence are,” says Dutkiewicz. “They know that to have access to money you can capitalize on your position. From their perspective, they’re making a rational choice.”

“About 300,000 educated Russians left the country this year,” Sakwa adds. “It’s become a mass phenomenon.”

Medvedev has positioned himself as the prophet of Russian modernization, launching a plan for innovation and diversification that would update medical, telecom and space technology and promote energy efficiency.

So far it has had little effect. Nor have his pronouncements on modernizing Russia’s governing system, discredited courts and monopolistic power structure.

The country is still riddled with corruption, its infrastructure dangerously decayed, its health care and education systems lagging, and a vicious undercurrent of ethnic and religious intolerance adding to serious human rights abuses.

As the elections approach, polls show that Russians are largely unmoved by either rhetoric or charisma. They are carrying on as they have through far more turbulent times — expecting the worst while hoping, somehow, for the best.

“Since 2008 when Medvedev took office, Putin was prepared for early elections,” says Nikolay Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “He’s never stopped campaigning. What is absolutely sure is that he doesn’t want to leave the political scene.”

Like the video contest, it’s winner take all.

Hero-worshiping or making fun?

Is Putin’s Army for real? Two views from young Muscovites:

Masha, student organizer of Putin’s Army, 18:

I saw Putin for the first time when I was 7 years old. (At a performance of The Nutcracker.) At intermission we ran into a group of people, including Putin. He asked me what my mother did, how I am, and if I liked the ballet. My mother took a photo of us together…when my grandmother saw the photo she said that “someone who manages to speak to the czar and talk to him will be lucky all their lives.”

Starting at that moment I considered myself extremely lucky and in some ways a special person.

I organized (Putin’s Army) with my girlfriends who are interested in politics. I think that from 1999, the moment when he came to power, life has improved greatly. Life in my family is much more comfortable.

Olesya, Moscow marketing consultant, 30:

Putin is a dictator. Yes, he gave us an illusion of stability but in reality it’s not so. His “hands-on” management style doesn’t lead to anything remarkable or positive. The interventions of Putin or Medvedev aren’t enough to transform Russia into the country of the 21st century.

Their government has not improved life or the economy at all. Because of thriving corruption and lack of functioning laws we pay much higher prices for everything — corruption and bribes make them higher.

As for Putin’s Army it seems to me the girls are only making fun. I’m not convinced they are really doing it for political support. I want to vote, but I don’t know who to vote for. I’m really upset that they have removed the option to vote “against all.”